11 Apr 2022

Pan American 2022 Task 3 - USA gets the lift

Day three of the 5th FAI Pan American Paragliding championship was full of surprises. In the morning the rain cloud that was showering over Valadares refused to go away thus making the perspective of setting a task vague. It was decided at the team leader briefing to postpone the transfer for one hour hoping to get a better meteo forecast at about 9 a.m. But the local pilots insisted in Valadares most days are flyable so even if the forecast is bad the buses should go up. The obtained provisions said that the first past of the day will be overcast while the afternoon promised flyable. It was decided to go up, but now the obstacle came in the face of the bus rental company owner who refused to send buses uphill cause the road was "allegedly" wet. Luckily after some negotiations, the buses were allowed to leave.

When we arrived on the take of the cloud base was still low with columns of cloud-formation lifting from the slopes of the peak. But it cleared rather quickly. The window open was set at 13.00 by that time the valley was already open, just a couple of grey rainy clouds were still shadowing part of the take-off. The start was at 14.15. The chosen task of 55.9 km race to goat could be seen as an out and return but in fact, it was not. Turn points were concentric circles around goal cylinder so the pilots were free to choose any direction in which they should approach the goal. That played a trick. Some pilots preferred to get to the last turn point downwind and then return upwind, others (a majority) have chosen the opposite to have the possibility to the goal downwind. To their luck, they got a conversion line on a course that resulted in completing the task in as little as 1h13min for the leader. The group that tried to get to the goal upwind came later.

The first on ESS and actually the winner of the task is a US female pilot Galen Kirkpartick. Having already won the 2d task in a female category Galen decided to add also overall to her collection. That victory allowed USA to move Argentina out of the second place on the Nations overall podium.